2010 Eco-Blogging Garden Adventure in Mexico – You Are Killing the Coral – STOP USING CHEMICAL FERTILIZERS!
Stop Using Chemical Fertilizers – You Are Killing the Coral
This is coral. While walking along the beach I found it washed up in the sand. We took this photo, then put the coral back in the ocean. Sadly, coral is dying all along the Riviera Maya coast in Mexico because of over fertilization.
When the ocean water becomes too fertile it causes “green blooming”, which definitively means the coral becomes covered with a green algae which then smothers and kills it. Once the coral is dead, it looks like a bleached white stone.
Over fertilization happens from two prime sources. One is local – cruise ships and tourists who dump urine into the ocean increase the fertility level. Second is from the United States and Mexico. The Mississippi River dumps millions of gallons of fertilizer run-off into the Gulf of Mexico. Ocean currents pull it around the Yucatan Peninsula and smack it into the fields of coral all along the coast.
When you use chemical fertilizers on your gardens, you are first adding unnecessary chemicals to the food stream. Do you really need to be consuming these chemicals? You are also adding chemical fertilizer to the water run-off from your home. That run off goes to your sewer systems, then eventually gets dumped in the Mississippi River. That fertilizer has a long shelf life and takes a long trip – all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Once it is there, it travels where ever the current takes it, killing as it goes.
Why is it important to save coral? Because baby fish use coral as a nursery. Without coral, we might not have the fish population we do now. That means less food on earth. Keeping the delicate balance in the ocean is important to humanity as well as to the fish. Without coral, the tourist industry in Mexico would dry up. Thousands and thousands of people would be without work in the U.S. and Mexico because the airlines and many other resources center around this genre of business.
Do something good for the earth – stop using chemical fertilizers!!
Right! So great and right to the point. Over fertilizing is horrid and kills more than we know… and don't even get me started on the idiotic use of round-up. Ug.
Great post!
Thanks DG – so nice to hear from you – and glad you agree.
Shawna
“Stop using chemical fertilizers!!”
Here! Here! I agree!
What's great is that these days, so many natural fertilizers and other gardening supplies are available. Or better yet, making your own compost fertilizer is probably better than anything on the market, and clean for the environment, plus costs nothing. 🙂 Great post.
This is so sad! Poor baby fish!!